Tick Tock Sheptock

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Fund Homeless Employment Strategies

The following was a testimony I
prepared for DC Mayor Muriel Bowser's Budget “hearing” on
February 23rd, 2015. It turns out that the event was
actually a roundtable discussion with dozens of tables and hundreds
of people brainstorming about what the mayor's budget priorities
should be. That said, I never read my testimony to government
personnel while being televised like I would at an actual hearing. No
worries; as, you get to read it here and now.

At the risk of evoking thoughts
about my notorious love of women and/or inspiring a lesser charge of
infatuation with Muriel Bowser (infatuation usually being associated
with females), I'll say that the mayor has made yet another brownie
point with me. Let's be clear: I came to DC on July 31st,
2005; experienced the last 17 months of the Tony Williams
administration; but, I never met the man. I met Adrian Fenty during
the summer of 2006 while he was campaigning for mayor – having
served as such from January 2007 to January 2011. He and I have gone
nose-to-nose a couple of times. Then there was Mayor Vince Gray who
avoided me like the plague. Fact of the matter is that, while having
two people or items in a series gives you the space to compare or
contrast them, it takes at least three people or items to establish a
pattern or trend and to be able to predict what's coming next. With
Ms. Bowser being the third sitting DC mayor that I've dealt with, I
have now reached a place where I can discuss the patterns or trends
that I see from one mayor to the next. So, you can table the
aforementioned accusations unless and until I fail to crack down on
Muriel Bowser for any missteps that she might take concerning the
District's poor.

I noticed weeks ago that Muriel
doesn't maintain a security detail in her immediate presence like her
two male predecessors did. I guess that if you don't plan to piss
people off, you don't need to prepare for their retaliation. (That's
a good lesson for the president, Congress and the feds.) But that's
not why she's made yet another brownie point with me. It is because
of her early engagement with the public so as to gather their input
on what her policies should be.

Adrian Fenty was infamously
arrogant and wasn't big on public engagement. On April 6th,
2008 he sent several administration officials to the Franklin School
Shelter to “TELL” its 300 men what would be done to them and
their shelter. Vince Gray held his “One City Summit” on February
11th, 2012 to the tune of $600,000 (and hours before the
death of Whitney Houston). He never followed through on what 2,000 DC
residents said was most important to them. Had he done so, we'd have
much more affordable housing, many more living-wage jobs and a much
better educational system – just for starters.

In what I would have to assume
is an attempt to avoid “analysis paralysis”, Mayor Muriel created
four positions for the “housing navigators” mentioned in the
previous blog post. They'll be actively connecting homeless people to
housing while the administration puts together a more robust plan for
addressing homelessness – triage then long-term treatment. In
keeping with her avoidance of analysis paralysis and in direct
contrast to the 13 months it took Gray to put together a “meaningful”
public forum, Mayor Muriel has held at least two public forums hardly
a month-and-a-half into her administration. (And I'm sure it didn't
cost $600,000 or $300 per participant to organize.) Another point
made in a previous blog post is that the council too is gathering
input for a plan to address homelessness; though, in contrast, they
are not implementing any form of “triage” in the meantime. The
council is more like than the mayor to suffer (and cause others to
suffer) from analysis paralysis.

I sometimes wonder if there is a telepathic connection between Mayor Muriel and myself; as, she is doing almost everything that I was hoping for. I'd told people that, if she didn't meet with the homeless and/or their advocates by April 1st, I would lay into her hard. She's more than satisfied that demand, with me having never articulated it to her. I'll now give her until July 1st to partially implement a plan for homeless families and until October 1st to begin planning around employment for able-bodied homeless people. If she meets both benchmarks, I'll know that either we do have such a connection or she simply reads my blog for advice. Either one is welcome news, though the former opens up more possibilities -- and creates more questions.

That said.....

Fund
Homeless Employment Strategies

Hello. My name is Eric Jonathan
Sheptock and I've advocated for the homeless since June 2006. While
on the council, Ms. Bowser was a signatore on the resolution that
declared December 31st, 2014 to be Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day
in Washington, DC. That said, she's familiar with my work – pro
bono “WORK”.

As a seasoned homeless
advocate, I would say that “WORK” is the operative word here.
Though some would argue that not enough has been done for the most
vulnerable homeless who can't work, I firmly believe that a portion
of the Human Services and Employment Services budgets should be
devoted to connecting able-bodied homeless people to living-wage jobs
and affordable housing.

I have said in my blog and to my fellow homeless advocates that I love what Mayor Bowser is doing
in terms of homelessness. She's hit the ground running and made
ending homelessness (which three male mayors before her ostensibly
“tried” to do) her pet project. Even while on the council, she
stated her support for Permanent Supportive Housing which assists the
mentally and physically disabled homeless. However, no administration
to-date has made a robust effort to connect homeless or low-income
workers to living-wage jobs. I'd have to conclude that previous
mayors going back as far as Tony Williams would much rather see those
who can't make six figures leave DC. But cities don't function
without janitors, cab drivers and stock boys. Low-wage workers of the
world, ARISE!!!

If we get homeless A-bods
working and weaned off of the system, that leaves more resources to
assist the permanently disabled. But farbeit from me to suggest that
we ignore our most vulnerable citizens. We should assist all
sub-populations of the homeless community at acquiring housing
simultaneously – families, single A-bods and the disabled. Maybe we
should devote a third of all available “exit strategy” funds (as
opposed to shelter and feeding funds) to getting each sub-population
housed.

I know that I haven't given any
concrete dollar amounts concerning “homeless employment and exit
strategy” funds; however, I will soon be meeting with Bowser
administration officials to discuss a detailed plan for connecting
homeless people to employment. I am also a co-leader in a project
that involves interviewing homeless people about their employment
challenges. That said, additional plans, figures and information are
forthcoming in the near future.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

I Love DC Mayor Muriel Bowser('s Plan for Ending Homelessness)

Quite frankly, I think that the Bowser
administration is doing better than the council (headed by Phil
Mendelson) when it comes to addressing homelessness. Muriel Bowser
hit the ground running when she took office. She used Miriams's
Kitchen as a backdrop when announcing her cabinet appointments for
positions that are related to homelessness. (Oddly enough, “Homeless
Czar(ina)” Kristy Greenwalt wasn't present.) Since taking office, the mayor has moved Deborah Carroll from being interim director of the
Department of Human Services (DHS) to being director of the
Department Of Employment Services (DOES). I'm holding out hope that
Ms. Carroll, who has already responded well to my request for a
meeting about homeless employment, will continue to please me by
forcing a continuous and robust public conversation around this topic
and will impress me with what she actually “DOES”.

While I won't completely rehash all of
the compliments that I gave Mayor Bowser in the previous blog post,
I'll say that she is incorporating concepts that I've talked about
for several years now. She has given the public a general idea of how
she plans to proceed when it comes to ending homelessness, with
details to come later. I applaud her for that. The council, on the
other hand, continues to hold hearings during which they gather input
on how to proceed. The administration will get there “lickety
split” while the council is still “packing its sh*t” (for those
of you who know the joke). Though I plan to testify at a council
hearing about homelessness (having been unable to do so at the first
one), I am more enthused about working with the very accessible
administration. After all, the mayor can move on her decisions
without having to get buy-in from 12 other elected officials (minus
the two currently vacant seats which could leave us with a majority
female council once filled in April).

It seems to me that the mayor is
incorporating a concept that I thought, spoke and wrote about long
ago by making the end of homelessness in Washington, DC her “pet
octopus” – a core issue with tentacles that extend into other
areas and afford her an infinite and ever-metamorphosing agenda. One
tentacle has already taken her fully into the affordable housing
arena. Efforts are underway to stretch another tentacle into
the living-wage job arena. Before all is said and done(?), she'll
venture into the areas of domestic violence, medical bankruptcy and
untreated mental illness – as all are causes of homelessness.
(Heavy drinking and illicit drug use are the sixth and seventh
biggest reasons for homelessness in this country, even if news
reports make it seem like the majority of homeless people are
substance abusers. Nothing could be further from the truth.) We've
got a septapus so far. I'm sure we'll find an eighth tentacle soon.

During the January 30th,
2015 hearing on homelessness, Inter-agency Council on Homelessness
Director/ Homeless Czarina Kristy Greenwalt told the council that
there is a need to capture people living in poverty BEFORE they
become homeless. The administration as a whole has gone on the record
as wanting to implement preventive measures. I've told people over
the years that ending homelessness is like fixing a leaking water
supply line insomuch as you would turn the water off and stop the
flow before you mop up the mess. I'm glad Bowser and her “Dream
Team” get it.

The Department of Human Services, under
the direction of my long-time friend Laura Zeilinger, is building a
concept which they're temporarily calling “Flow Housing”. (They're
taking suggestions for a better name.) Flow Housing will serve people
who will always be poor and will need unending financial support
while they live and work in DC. (Such programs for the working poor
are corporate subsidies for employers who under-pay their workers,
not hand-outs to lazy moochers. But we need them anyway.) This effort
by DHS hearkens back to conversation that I had with Laura in her
former life as deputy director of DHS under former mayor Fenty before
going to the USICH. At that time, I told her that we need to focus on
making homeless people completely self-sufficient such that they
don't need any type of subsidy. I knew that my suggestion would be
difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill. She took the bait and said
what I expected as she told me that many people would always need
some level of support. Now that she's back in DC government, she's
acting on that understanding with her creation of “Flow housing”.
Good job.

While past administrations have focused
on providing deplorable shelters with poorly-trained staff and have
moved as slowly as possible to create affordable housing, Mayor
Bowser has articulated plans that include both suitable shelter in
the immediate and affordable housing in the not-so-distant future.
After all, someone with spaghetti for brains could figure out that
any plan to end homelessness would have to include the creation of
housing that can be afforded by the homeless. Mayor Muriel Bowser
gets it.

Many people, including the media, want
to know my opinion of Mayor Bowser's plan to end homelessness –
especially her plans for homeless families. Well, here it is. I LOVE
IT!!! Some people are calling into question Ms. Bowser's decision not
to use $600,000 that the previous mayor set aside for new case
managers at the family shelter for that purpose. They believe that,
if she doesn't use it to hire additional case managers, she ought to
use it to retrain the existing case managers. While it's true that
the case managers can be quite unprofessional, I believe that Ms.
Bowser made the right decision.

The mayor plans to hire four “housing
navigators” who will assist homeless families and individuals at
finding the most suitable housing. A few years ago, DHS admitted to
having so many case managers and so few housing units that everyone –
service providers and homeless people alike – was frustrated. People were
being made to see case managers who told them that there was no
housing available for them. Why bother?! That's what I call “case
non-management” – bringing someone into your office just to tell
them that you can't help them. The mayor is putting housing – the
pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – ahead of improving or
increasing case management. Hoorah.

Unbeknownst to her, I've often argued
that we should focus on creating a large number of affordable units
and living-wage jobs for the homeless; let the high-functioning
homeless run for them; and then, offer case management and a
taken-by-the-hand approach to those who are left, as they have deeper
issues. I've said that, if we create and enforce rights that prevent
high-functioning homeless people from being discriminated against in their
searches for jobs and housing, then as many as 60% of the homeless
would get THEMSELVES out of homelessness. (Many homeless service providers would
become unnecessary and unemployed in one fell swoop – all the more
reason to do it.) It makes no sense to ask each individual homeless
person what they need or to require them to participate in case
management before we have sufficient stock of what we know are the
most widely-shared needs of the group – affordable housing and
living-wage jobs. If we have these things in store first, then the
case managers can actually help their clients who visit the office.
Howbeit, her logical plan to focus on connecting homeless people to
affordable housing doesn't preclude her from using the $600,000 to
retrain case managers. It doesn't have to be “either-or”. It can
be “both-and”.

In closing, I'll say what you've
probably guessed by this point: I LOVE DC Mayor Muriel Bowser (so
far). It's not due to her being a woman, though I am infamous for
loving women as much as I do. She has gotten off to a really great
start. I don't know if she's driven by her desire to out-do the last
three male mayors who “tried” and failed to end homelessness,
fear that I would be as hard on her as I was on mayors Fenty and Gray
or a genuine desire to end homelessness and to enable people of all
economic strata to live in DC. It could be two or all three. No
matter the reason(s), I love what she's doing. Like I told Ms. Bowser
at the Homeless Point-In-Time Count, “Let's keep it that way”. If
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser is reading this, I'd have you to know: “WildThing, I [know] I love you”.

There are 20 years that don't make a day; then, there's that day that makes 20 years.

The news of her plans for the homeless
is an awesome birthday gift for me. February 15th, 2015
(my 46th birthday) is also 46 days after Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day.
I'll spend at least some of the day enjoying the fact that the city's
poor and homeless will find some relief under this mayor.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser Might Actually End Homelessness!!!

In recent weeks many people have asked
my thoughts on DC Mayor Muriel Bowser who took office on January 2nd,
2015. I tell them that, while I believe that she really wants to end
homelessness, I worry that she doesn't have the right people
informing the process. Like I told Mayor Bowser at the January 28th
homeless point-in-time count (one of at least five
homeless/affordable housing events that I know she's attended since
December 29th, 2014), I like her appointment of Laura
Zeilinger as director of the Dept. of Human Services (DHS) and a few
other cabinet appointments – kristy Greenwalt as director of the
Inter-agency Council on homelessness (ICH), Brenda Donald as deputy
mayor of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Polly Donaldson as
director of the Dept. of Housing and Community Development (DHCD).

I also told her that, after the results
of the 2014 count indicated that there had been a 13% increase in DC
homelessness in a single year (going from 6,859 in '13 to 7,748 in
'14), we didn't have the usual report-out at the next bi-monthly ICH
meeting; and, there's no sense in gathering the data if we aren't
going to use it. (Mayor Bowser wants to use a data-driven approach.)
I concluded by telling her that I'm on her side. And I am.

Unfortunately, folk in DC Government
are often too professional to be practical, though I don't suspect
the Bowser administration to suffer from “analysis paralysis”.
I've gotten the sense that Ms. Bowser values "professional opinions”
more than she values the opinions of those who are directly-affected
by the social ill which is being addressed. Unless she changes this
aspect of her nascent administration, it might just be her undoing.
She has, on at least a couple of occasions, given homeless people
short shrift when they told her about a problem. On the other hand,
she's tapped people from the non-profit community to become part of
her administration – with the lion's share of high-level positions
going to women.

During the point-in-time count, Mayor
Bowser said, “I know people are saying that you have to be a woman
to work for me; but, I have some really great men working for me
too”. She then acknowledged City Administrator Rashad Young.
Period. (He's rather large; but, he still only qualifies as one man.)
Howbeit, that was an awkward event in at least one other way: Various
federal and city officials were introduced at least three times by
the different speakers – Shaun Donovan, Sue Marshall and Muriel
Bowser. I felt like shouting, “We know who the Hell they are! Will
you quit introducing them already!”. I didn't.

That said, I got the feeling on
December 29th that the mayor had a “girl power” thing
going on; as, the event at Miriam's Kitchen which feeds 300 homeless
people per day was a press conference about her cabinet appointments
for positions that deal with homelessness. Though I saw it four days
before she took office, I probably should've seen her "girl power" theme sooner. After
all, the three previous mayors – all men – said that they'd end
homelessness but didn't. So, if she succeeds, it will be to the
chagrin of these men and will further validate women as a viable
force in the world (or the city, anyway). Then again, who needs
validation?! Just in case any woman reading this does, I am in full
support of Mayor Muriel Bowser's “girl power” antics. I encourage
her to do whatever gets the job done without deviating from good
principle. The end justifies many (but not all) means.

As it turns out, Mayor Bowser is not
the only one who feels that the city's failure to end homelessness
has become the scourge of DC. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has
made homelessness something that will be addressed by the COW
(Committee Of the Whole). In the past it was the responsibility of
the one councilperson who had oversight of the Dept. of Human
Services. This developing dichotomy creates the potential for these “separate but equal”
branches of government to come to logger heads over the approach.
That has already begun to happen in a small way that I won't bother
explaining here and now. But we can turn that negative into a
positive by throwing much public support behind what we believe to be
the better approach. (I would start by supporting the mayor insomuch
as she's more capable of making unilateral decisions without any
“congressional bickering” and I support and prefer the use of executive power over group decisions -- no matter who is in office or what their gender is.)

This would be a good place to mention
the fact that I actually voted for former councilman David Catania as
mayor because he has a mean streak which I believe is necessary to
make government think and function better. While Mayor Bowser doesn't
need to develop a mean streak in order to be effective, she DOES need
to be able to force people to have the hard conversations – no
matter how sweetly she commands them to do so. She needs to get her
administration to admit when they are failing and to then rectify the
situation. The failure to discuss the astronomical one-year increase
in homelessness was due to certain people not wanting to discuss
various grim realities related to homelessness and poverty or their own apparent weaknesses. They were
kind to a fault. If they don't change swiftly, I'll need to change
that diagnosis to “stuck on stupid”. Let's hope they change.
Force the hard conversations.

With Ms. Bowser choosing to use a
data-driven approach, we must remind ourselves that the same data can
be interpreted differently by different people. However, when you
consider that:

1 – DC had 5,757 homeless people in
2007

2 – Permanent Supportive Housing was
launched in earnest in September 2008 and was federally-funded in Fiscal
Years '09 and '10

3 – we had 6,546 homeless people in
2011 and

4 – we had 7,748 homeless people in
2014 (a 35% increase in seven years with 2015 results coming out in
May).....

…..all you can irrefutably conclude
is that nothing we've done to end homelessness has worked. All other
conclusions must be derived from that one.

Mayor Bowser has repeatedly stated her
support for Permanent Supportive housing. It's a good program in its
own rite. It is worthy of increased funding. However, we need to do
more than fund programs for the disabled if we're going to end
homelessness. Data collected by a city contractor has indicated that
at least half of the homeless are both able to work and under age 60.
When you factor in the elders who choose to work, that may account
for as much as 60% of DC's presumed 8,750 homeless people or 5,250
people.

Past administrations have avoided
initiating any robust effort to connect homeless A-bods to
living-wage jobs. I believe that it is part of a grand scheme to push
all low-income people out of the city. But it also stands to reason
that an effort to connect homeless A-bods to employment would expose
unfair hiring and renting practices and put the city at odds with
many developers, landlords and employers. I dare Mayor Muriel Bowser
to rise to the challenge anyway. Force the hard conversations. Show
that women have the power to challenge the status quo.

It's worth noting that many homeless
advocates have been invigorated or reinvigorated by the mayor's
resolve when it comes to ending homelessness. More than a few groups
that work on homelessness and affordable housing have sprung into
action and invited the mayor to speak at their events in the past
five weeks. But, to my dismay, not much is being said about homeless
employment. Even so, I am currently working with two professors and
their two dozen students to gather data and do interviews that
highlight the difficulties that many people (not just the homeless)
have finding living-wage jobs. We'll present our findings to the DC
Council and the mayor's administration by the end of May. Hopefully,
this will cause the mayor to rise to the challenge of homeless
employment and to force the hard conversations. Keep hope alive.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

DC Government's Attitude Toward the Working Poor

When I began advocating for the
homeless in June 2006, my colleagues and I were fighting against the
Williams administration's proposed closure of the Franklin School
Shelter. Our arguments included the fact that the shelter was located
in Downtown Washington, DC near multiple subway stations and several
bus lines that made it easy for the working homeless to get to their
jobs. We also argued that every shelter should make accommodations
for the working homeless to reserve their beds and not have to choose
between working and having a shelter bed – a tough choice indeed,
especially during inclement weather.

Franklin School Shelter was eventually
closed by the Fenty administration after Adrian Fenty made campaign
promises to members of the Committee to Save Franklin Shelter in
which he stated that, once elected, he would not close Franklin. CSFS
began the process of becoming a non-profit under the name Until We're
Home inc. but disbanded before that process was complete. Some of the
former members went away, never to be heard from again. At least one
has died. Others, like myself, have continued to advocate either with
other groups or as individuals. But my advocacy has retained its
emphasis on homeless employment.

I DID jump on the Permanent Supportive
Housing (PSH) bandwagon and advocate for housing for the disabled
homeless. It was due, in part, to me having been told that after the
most vulnerable homeless were helped that the least vulnerable who
just had employment issues would be housed and connected to
employment. PSH was first talked about at the local level (in earnest
anyway) in April 2008. Hundreds of vulnerable people were hurriedly
and haphazardly housed in the last week of September 2008. More than
six years later, the program has not gotten around to assisting
homeless a-bods (able-bodied people); the Department of Human
Services (DHS) administration has gone through several turnovers
during the last two mayoral administrations and the DHS
administrators who've been involved for at least seven years seem to
have forgotten that promise.

Fast forward to the summer of 2010. ONE
DC, a non-profit that fights for affordable housing in DC's Shaw
neighborhood, organized the creation of a tent city in response to
Adrian Fenty's broken promise to build affordable housing on a
city-owned plot of land known as “Parcel 42”. We occupied the
land from July 10th until October 7th when the
city tore it down. Then-Councilman Michael Brown visited our site and
during our conversation he said, “Even if the city were to create
affordable housing for those who make $35,000 per year of less [and
can pay $900/month or less], everything else in DC is so expensive
that they still wouldn't be able to live here”. We would have to
assume that the current council and administration are thinking along
similar lines; as this would explain why rents have been allowed to
skyrocket and why the city has decreased its commitment to connecting
hard-to-employ people to jobs.

The average rent now sits at around
$1,500 per month, requiring that a full-time worker make almost $30
per hour. Dozens of affordability covenants that the city signed with
landlords have been allowed to expire simultaneously, causing rents
in those complexes to go from $1,000 to $1,600 all at once. Add to
this the fact that DC Government's Department of Employment Services
(DOES) under Muriel Bowser has been changed from a stand-alone
department with a cabinet-level director to a division of the
Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA). DOES is more of
a social service than anything else, primarily assisting poor and
difficult-to-employ people. That begs the question, “Why put them
under DCRA and not DHS?”. It also begs the bigger question, “Are
demoting the director's position from the cabinet level to the
division level and tucking DOES away within DCRA the mayor's way of
showing that she has little or no interest in assisting those who'll
probably never be high-income earners?”. Taken together, the city's
failure to do everything (or even “ANYTHING”) within its power to
keep rents down and the new administration's way of distancing itself
from the working or willing-to-work poor create a message that city
officials just want the poor to leave. Then again, the low-wage
workers deliver some much-needed services to the local economy.
Without hospitality workers in our hotels and restaurants, the
capital's tourism industry would go belly-up.

Fast forward to February 2013 when a
Washington Post article indicated that a pilot program in which 11
homeless parents were being trained in construction trades was shut
down, in spite of 10 people succeeding with one having had a stroke
and become disabled (evidently the swiftest way to acquire housing).
Now slow forward a mere two months and the recently-departed
administration is issuing statements wherein they strongly imply that
homeless parents are lazy and shiftless. The latter would seem to be
nothing more than a fabricated lie which is being used to justify
draconian policies that force low-income workers out of the city.

In spite of the important contributions
that low-wage workers make to the local economy, getting homeless
service providers to make a robust effort to assist homeless a-bods
with their employment issues has been – and continues to be -- an
uphill battle. I've done several blog posts that address this issue.
I've been featured in multiple articles that highlight this issue. I
hear homeless people asking for employment assistance on a regular
basis. I stood up at the October 2014 bi-monthly meeting of the DC
ICH (Inter-agency Council on Homelessness) and told the group that we
need to do something for the a-bods before they reach retirement age.
Then there was the December ICH meeting which, to my elation, was
preceded by a roundtable discussion on homeless employment. While
this roundtable discussion says nothing about the mayor's or
council's interest in homeless people's employment, it is a good
starting point for building momentum – and build momentum we will.

In the past I've harped about how the
U.S. Dept.of Labor and a 1,350-bed shelter are right across the road
from each other and yet DOL has not attempted to connect any of these
homeless people to employment. I actually DO understand how
administrations work and that US DOL is a federal agency, not a local
one. It's just an awkward geographical coincidence. As if that
weren't enough, there are now plans to build a platform with several
buildings over the I-395 underpass which is just north of the
shelter. This puts the Dept.of Labor, a ginormous shelter and a
super-ginormous construction project in consecutive blocks.

A couple of colleagues and I met with
members of the development team of Property Group Partners (PGP) and
Balfour Beatty Construction on December 15th, 2014 to
discuss homeless employment. The developers were very accommodating.
They promised to modify their website by posting instructions for
obtaining employment there (a process which is not completely
intuitive). They asked me for a list containing aggregate numbers of
people who can perform various trades; but, shelter staff has not
been accommodating in terms of allowing me to gather such
information. More recently, PGP offered to purchase food and find
meeting space for a meeting that my associates and I plan to hold
with homeless job seekers. PGP/BB have become awesome partners and
offered a ray of hope for the working poor. I look forward to
continuing this relationship.

Hardly a day goes by anymore where I
don't tell someone that, “Before you call a homeless person lazy,
you should offer them a job and whatever other supports they need to
make it to the first check”. This is a basic principle that our
government needs to wrap its collective head around. It looks as
though my colleagues and I will need to make this happen, in spite of
the government. Not a problem. On Wednesday, January 21st,
2014 American University Professor Dan kerr, 17 of his students,
other invited guests and myself will meet at Washington, DC's MLK,
Jr. Library in Room A-3 from 9:30 to 11 AM to begin a process of
documenting the struggles that homeless people have obtaining
employment. Once videos are made and the website built, we'll present
this information to policy makers for their consideration. Let's move
things forward, in spite of the government. The beat goes on.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day & DC Mayor Muriel Bowser

On November 18th, 2014 the DC Council presented me with a resolution declaring December 31st, 2014 to be Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day in the District of Columbia. During the presentation, people were all smiles as we exchanged pleasantries. However, I used the occasion to address some serious business too by letting mayor-elect Muriel Bowser know that I'd like to work with her to address homelessness -- through the creation of affordable housing and living-wage jobs for the homeless. I also made it clear that we have at least time-and-a-half as many homeless people as we had when city officials "committed" themselves to decreasing homelessness and that we, therefore, have our work cut out for us.

I'm not sure what drove the DC Council to pick December 31st as Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day but that date is significant in several ways. It is 46 days before my 46th birthday which falls on 2/15 of 2(0)15. So there is a little numerical symmetry going on there. But more importantly, it is the date by which DC Government's 10-year plan to end homelessness was supposed to have ended homelessness in the city. In June of 2006 the DC Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH) held its first meeting. Five months prior we counted 6,157 homeless people. (I couldn't find info electronically for how many homeless people there were in DC in 2004.) The 10-year plan was scrapped in 2007 due to three years of not meeting benchmarks. (More recently the New Communities affordable housing group gave up on its mission. There's a lot of giving up on the poor going on in DC these days.) We're sure to count nearly 9,000 homeless people in January. The numbers won't be published until May. That said, December 31st, 2014 is symbolic of DC Government's failures toward the poor.

I seek to change that. So, let me say here as I said during the presentation that I DO work with others. I'm not alone in my efforts. However, without sufficient political will to decrease homelessness and poverty in DC, we advocates are just shouting our demands for naught. That's why I've already begun to make inroads into the Bowser administration by publicly declaring my desire to work with her. Hopefully she'll be willing to recognize and learn from the city's failed efforts to decrease homeless and poverty and she'll then invest all of the necessary resources in a successful effort.

In one sense, such a commitment would make it easy for her to develop her legacy early on; as, the effort to end homelessness has tentacles that would take her into areas like affordable housing,living-wage jobs, domestic violence, medical bankruptcy, mental illness, inadequate education, lack of job training, adolescent homosexuality, the shortcomings of foster care and other areas. She could start with a willingness to end homelessness and end up with a plan for the city as a whole.

in another sense, such a commitment would make her job extremely difficult. She'd have to bump heads with the free-market economy in order to demand that homeless people receive living wages and affordable housing -- forcing employers to pay more and landlords to charge less. Ms. Bowser would also need to combat employer discrimination against the homeless. These and other efforts related to decreasing and ending homelessness and poverty would put her at odds with many capitalists.

That said, I'm working on getting a meeting with her. Despite my having noticed patterns in local governance that make me skeptical that we'll ever get adequate supports for the poor of DC (many of whom work and contribute to the life of the city), I'm willing to lay aside any presuppositions and to give Ms. Bowser a chance based on her own merits -- to see her as the "woman apart" which she claims to be. I hope to have the meeting arranged by the end of next week. Let's see what happens.

Give 'er HADES: Innundate Muriel Bowser with the Demands of the Poor

I contacted the Bowser transition team
today and will reconnect with them tomorrow when the person who will
work on homelessness is expected to do their first day on the job.
I'll update via this blog and social media.

****************************************

As I look at the injustices that are
perpetrated upon poor people in this country and around the world, I
often ask myself, “Where is the outrage???”. Capitalism is a
hurtful system that permeates the world and sears the consciences of
politicians, businesspeople and the well-to-do. It makes them callous
to the needs of those who beg at their feet and want only to consume
their crumbs. Yet most people who hear or read the stories don't make
it their business to confront the evil forces of capitalism.

Budapest, Hungary has outlawed
homelessness (without offering the necessary supports). At an
ever-increasing rate since 2006 (the year I began advocating), U.S.
cities have been outlawing the feeding of homeless people in public
spaces, arresting homeless people for sleeping on sidewalks or in
parks (even when they lack a safe alternative) and stiffening
penalties for relieving oneself in public. While that last item is a
hard one to argue against, all of the aforementioned activities have
to do with satisfying human needs. Other countries are looking at how
the U.S. treats its poor.

A recent story about a 90-year old man
and two ministers who were jailed in Ft.Lauderdale, FL for feeding
homeless people is being read all over the world. You might remember
that two dozen Food not Bombs workers were jailed in Orlando, FL a
few years ago for feeding more than 25 homeless people in Lake Eola
Park. The bankrupt city of Detroit has, in recent months, turned off
the water of thousands of poor residents – many of them put out of
work by the economic crisis of 2008 and the more recent loss of jobs
to new technology.

Oddly enough, the republicans who will
have majorities in both houses of the 114th Congress come
January 2015 are known to pull the rug out from under people by
cutting social service funding. I can appreciate the idea of them
encouraging able-bodied people to get jobs. However, technology is
replacing many middle- and high-income jobs while the jobs that are
being created pay at or near minimum wage. A democratic congress will
support social services unless and until they create enough jobs;
while a republican congress will cut off people's sustenance without
any regard for how they'll survive. We'll soon have the latter. I've
long hoped that government would either ensure that people can find
all of the sustenance that we need or take so much of it away that
we'll be forced to realize their intent and to fight them – to have
a revolution. (Maybe as a step in that direction poor people all over
the country will organize events in which dozens of them steal items
from a single store simultaneously.)

In September 2014 the office of DC
Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan argued in the DC court of appeals
that the local government had no obligation to provide heat or water
to homeless families (with small children) who are using city
shelters. It strikes me as counter-intuitive to offer life-saving
shelter and then to withhold other life-saving amenities life heat
and water. I'm almost afraid to raise that argument with DC
Government insomuch as they're more likely to close the family
shelter as a way of eliminating this counter-intuitiveness than they
are to provide heat and water. I ask again, “Where is the
outrage???”

I often preface my cynical,
pessimistic views of DC Government with this short anecdote: During
the summer of 2010 I was part of a tent city that was constructed in
protest of former mayor Adrian Fenty due to him having broken his
promise to build affordable housing on Parcel 42 at the intersection
of 7th, R and Rhode Island in NW Washington, DC.
Then-Councilman Michael Brown visited the site. He said, “It
doesn't make sense for me to make housing affordable to those who
make less than $35,000 per year. Even if they could afford the
housing, everything else in DC is so expensive that they still
couldn't afford to live here”. Michael Brown was straight-forward
and honest. He's no longer on the council. Go figure. It stands to
reason that the mayor, most of the council's 13 members and many of
those who work for DC Government think the same way but don't say it
lest they go the way of Michael Brown.

That story helps to illustrate what
homeless and housing advocates are up against as we push for an end
to homelessness. Add to this the fact that the DC Council has created
weak rent control laws that have allowed the average rent to
creep...err jump up to $1,500 per month. They allowed affordability
covenants that the city signed with 45 apartment complexes to expire
simultaneously, causing those rents to jump from $1,000 to $1,600 per
month. This will greatly increase the cost to DC Government for
maintaining the housing of its most vulnerable constituents and slow
the rate at which others are assisted. Long story short, DC
Government is not making a good-faith effort to ensure that poor
residents – especially those who work in DC – can afford to
remain.

I'm continually bothered by the
complacency of DC's Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH), with
many of its members making at or around $100,000 per year. They've
ostensibly been trying to end homelessness since they first met in
June 2006. It's increased by almost 50% since they started. They are
not financially incentivized to actually succeed. Even so, I'll let
Kristy Greenwalt who became the body's first director on April 28th,
2014 continue to do her thing and see what results she renders. I'll
also recommend that mayor-elect Bowser retain Ms. Greenwalt. This
could happen as soon as November 14th (the day after this
post was written).

Given the attitudes of people in power
on local, national and international fronts, it's easy to see why I
feel the need to be mean or even to break the law. After all, not all
laws are righteous – especially when they forbid life-sustaining
activities or excuse an emergency shelter from providing basic human
necessities to its residents. There's a level of stupidity or
callousness that just makes various legislators and other public
officials worthy of an all-out smack-fest in which they each get
smacked around by dozens of the constituents whom they've denied
basic necessities to.

But for now I'll just recommend that we
lay into the incoming Bowser administration with our demands for
addressing poverty and homelessness. We need to give those in
government a fate worse than death – HADES. Government has
mismanaged the funds and affairs of the general public. They've
passed a complex amalgamation of laws that cater to other capitalists
and codify mistreatment of the poor. They now state those very laws
and the effects of the free market as the reasons for which they
can't accommodate the needy. We need to apply ever-increasing
pressure to government unless and until they find ways of reversing
the damage that their institution has done down through the ages. We
don't need to be nice or merciful. We need to be ever harder and
meaner unless and until they succeed at meeting all of our demands.

It is with this idea of giving the
incoming mayor HADES that I decided that I'll focus on getting DC
Government to connect the able-bodied homeless to living-wage jobs
and affordable housing. I expect everything about the effort to be
extremely difficult. First and foremost is the notion that DC
Government wants to attract middle- and high-income workers while
allowing the poor to go to Hell in a hand-basket. (DC Government will
be hard-pressed to disprove this assertion of mine.) Advocates for
the homeless had a relatively difficult time getting Adrian Fenty to
create Permanent Supportive Housing for disabled homeless singles. We
had a longer and harder fight getting Vince Gray to commit to
creating better shelter for homeless families. I expect to have to
fight Muriel Bowser all the way through her first term and possibly
into a second before she does anything to connect able-bodied singles
to living-wage jobs and affordable housing. But we can't count on her
doing a second term. We need to greatly intensify the pressure in
order to have our demands met during her first (and most likely,
ONLY) term.

Additional circumstances that make such
an undertaking difficult include the minimum wage which will reach
and remain at $11.50 per hour in July 2016 while the cost of living
requires that a full-time worker make about $30 per hour in DC. Add
to this the fact that DC is an education usurper insomuch as less
than half of students have graduated from high school in recent years
while 68% of jobs in this city require an education beyond high
school. 90% of those in the local workforce (many from elsewhere)
have diplomas, while only 64% of the workforce can read functionally.
All things considered, DC jobs require more of an education than is
offered to the locals, necessitating the influx of educated people
from elsewhere. DC usurps the education that other jurisdictions
offer their residents. I'd love to see Bowser wrangle with this
issue.

I was involved with Fenty's transition
team in December 2006. I saw a level of involvement by the homeless
that I haven't seen since. (There was pizza.) his transition period
overlapped with the four inugural meetings of the ICH. There was much
energy around ending homelessness. Eight years later we have more
homeless people. Even so, I would do it all over again; because,
giving up amounts to forsaking the poor. I'd rather give the Bowser
administration HADES and increase the pressure, thus forcing them to
end homelessness.

NOTE: Danielle Greene and I made the
round to all of the DC Council offices on Wednesday, November 12th,
2014 beginning at 2 PM. It was the first week of “Worker
Wednesdays” in which I hope to have an ever-increasing number of
people to apply pressure to DC Government to address the employment
issues of low-income residents. While there, we ran into at least a
couple of other lone advocates which included former at-large
candidate Eugene Puryear. We'll return on Wednesday, November 19th,
2014 at 2 PM. ALL ARE WELCOME.

Friday, November 7, 2014

Understanding Politics: The 2015-17 Republican lake of Fire

During the October 21st ICH
(Inter-agency Council on Homeless) meeting Kristy Greenwalt, the
first actual director the body has had in its eight and a half year
history, mentioned how nobody owns the system and went on to say that
we basically have to learn to build relationships and play nicely in
the sandbox. While I love her and her approach, building
relationships is not my strong suit. Articulating a strong sense of
principle that aggressively compels people to something because it's
moral and/or sensible is. Both sets of mannerisms are necessary. I've
been type-cast as the “bad cop” or the “pit bull on a short
leash” for much of my eight and a half years of advocacy. Being
nice hasn't worked well for me in the past.

That said, I knew that there was
potential for Kristy and I to build a strong relationship when,
during her introductory meetings just prior to assuming her post, she
said that she WILL make a decision in the absence of consensus. I'm
still holding out hope that she'll centralize power and make the body
that is charged with ending homelessness in DC effective. But first
she needs to be asked to stay by mayor-elect Muriel Bowser.

This past Wednesday a close friend and
ally in homeless advocacy told me that he didn't understand politics.
Though I could've said a mouthful, I decided to keep it brief,
knowing that I couldn't adequately address the topic in the few
minutes we had until we reached our destination and delved into other
business. However, I DID say that politics are built largely on
ignorance insomuch as politicians make promises that they aren't sure
they be able to keep and the voting public buys into the promises.
Both groups should bear in mind that an elected politician must go
through a legislature of 13 to 535 people in order to get a new law
passed. The voting public has little or no idea as to how to make a
principled choice and the candidates prey on that ignorance. And WHY
do we have an electoral college???

I would submit that the general public
– voting and non-voting – should use some basic rationale and
apply everyday morals to how they vote or politic. One of the first
things that I noticed about Barack Obama in January 2009 was that he
had what I'll call a non-agenda. He was going to reverse various
Bush-era policies. He eventually developed some semblance of a
proactive agenda as he pushed for healthcare reform. But his has been
a legacy of putting out fires. He's also got a bit of a personality
cult thing going on – which will probably define his legacy unless
he actually accomplishes something notable in his last two years.
Basic rationale should've caused people to realize that simply being
AGAINST what someone else has done or is doing – whether on the
campaign trail or in office -- does NOT constitute a PLAN. They
should've realized that by February 1st, 2009. I did. They
should also realize that not voting doesn't mean that they won't be
at the other end of the unfavorable policies which elected officials
implement.

In the summer of 2010 I was one of many
people who developed a tent city on a vacant lot in Washington, DC.
It was in protest to former mayor Adrian Fenty having not made good
on his promise to build affordable housing on Parcel 42. he broke a
number of promises and lost his re-election bid that year. The vice
of breaking promises no doubt played into his loss. He should have
known that many elections – rightly or wrongly – are built on
promises and that failing to keep campaign promises decreases a
candidate's chances for re-election. The voting public showed him.

In 2011 the advocacy group SHARC
(Shelter, Housing And Respectful Change) formed in order to inform
poor people about impending cuts to the budgets for various social
services and the negative impacts that these cuts would have on them.
Some of the poor people whom we attempted to engage in self-advocacy
thought that city officials were just “crying 'Wolf!'” again.
Other felt that city officials wouldn't heed our cries. Some SHARC
meetings had more emotion than reason. Most of the reasonable people
left. But SHARC is one of several advocacy groups that had its heyday
during a crisis and then fell apart once the crisis was averted
and/or the demands were met. That said, political involvement by the
general public only works if there is a sustained effort (as opposed
to a campaign), if there is more rationale than emotion among those
fighting for change and if people aren't discouraged from advocating or
politicking due to politicians and other public officials being
unresponsive.

Though I have indicated that I'm not
particularly happy with Obama's performance and said that being
AGAINST someone or their ideas does NOT constitute a PLAN, I joined
the chorus of social justice advocates who came out AGAINST MITT
ROMNEY in 2012. All of a sudden, Obama looked like the lesser of two
evils. Due in part to a news report about Obama telling Putin that
he'd be at greater liberty to discuss certain matters after his
re-election, I held out hope that Obama would drop the hammer on
Congress in his second term and drive them like the benevolent
dictator that the lower/working class needs him to be. He has failed
irreversibly. That said, we need a president who is proactive,
aggressive and concerned about ALL Americans, not just the wealthy
and well-to-do. We need to ensure that we don't vote for someone
based on color, gender or personable manner again. Voters need to know
what types of people can get the job done and what types can't. After
all, we meet both types in our day-to-day activities anyway.

I spent 2013 watching and waiting for
Obama to realize that he didn't need to be nice anymore since he
can't be re-elected anymore. His kindness hasn't bid well for his
party either. So, if party concerns kept him kind, then his rationale
is falling short in more ways than I imagined possible for a U.S.
president. (In the spirit of continuity, I often attend my church's
Bible study and remind other attendees that God is quite the
dictator; He squashes His opposition and he has a place where evil
men when burn for eternity – THE LAKE OF FIRE.)

In January 2013 I took it upon myself
to file a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request with the feds so
as to get information about the property rights for the 1,350-bed
Federal City Shelter and begin the public conversation about its
future. That process has progressed dramatically in the past 22
months. I bring that up to make the point that, when advocating and
politicking, you can't always speak in terms of abstract concepts or
principles. Sometimes you need to bring specific projects or present
specific applications of those principles. Many local advocates speak
about the need for affordable housing and living-wage jobs. Some of
us bring concrete ideas for legislators to act on.

I've spent much of 2014 expressing my
hope that David Catania would win his bid for mayor and become a
benevolent dictator who would force DC Government to function well.
He lost. Nonetheless, my continuity in the matter of (benevolent)
dictatorship remains unabated. As for his democratic opponent, her
having won the primary with less votes than Fenty (whose protege she
is) lost with four years ago stands as a testament to the
ineffectiveness of abstaining from politics and failing to vote. Such
tactics just enable a candidate to win office with less votes –
after promising to please or even fooling less people.

I knew some time ago that the last two
years of all two-term U.S. presidents since the 1950's have always
been marked by a majority of the congressional seats in both houses
going to the other party – not that of the president – a
phenomenon known as “the six-year itch”. With republicans lacking
enough senate seats to make them veto-proof, one doesn't need to
crystal ball to see that the next two years will be full of votes,
vetoes and vindictiveness. However, you might need some spiritual
discernment to foresee the political whining that Obama will do
throughout 2015 and the revolution that will most likely occur in
2016. I look forward to the latter and pray that I live to see it
through to its eventual end. (I'll be 46 in February with the average life expectancy for a homeless person being 52 years.)

That brings us to the “Republican
Lake of Fire” that I've referenced a couple of times in recent blog
posts. One would rightly assume that one of the ideas behind that
phrase is the constant war-mongering of the “party of 'No'”. Many
parts of the world have been set aflame by this party. Though I don't
fully agree with their perceived sense of principle, I completely
understand that one must have an aggressive edge in order to make obstinate people do what they should. Republicans have a fiery,
do-or-die way about themselves. It can be a good thing when applied
properly.

While they have limited ability to push
matters of good principle on the nation and the world, republicans
are terrible at process. Irrespective of their unfavorable capitalist
flavor, it is hard to argue with the notion that anyone who CAN work
SHOULD WORK. However, the repubs seem to think that just pulling the
rug out from under people will make them get jobs and hold their own.
The GOP fails to adequately address the challenges people have
finding or keeping jobs -- like technology taking some jobs away PERMANENTLY.

Democrats are more likely to afford
people the personal freedoms that they want such as the right to
smoke marijuana. They tend not to hold such demands up to a moral
measuring stick. Democrats are also better at adopting humane
processes for weaning people off of social services. To the extent
that they are unable to create jobs, democrats are less likely –
though not completely unlikely – to decrease social service
dollars.

All things considered, it would seem
that the majority of those who voted in 2014 were hoping for some
hardcore governance with a tinge of aggressively-enforced principle.
We know that they are dissatisfied with Obama. But I'm guessing that
most people didn't imagine that the GOP would be handed such a
mandate or the Hell that Obama is bound to go through come January
2015. That brings me back to the “Lake of Fire”.

I'm a firm believer that the various
spiritual occurrences mentioned in the Book of Revelation – the four
horsemen, Hades, the seven seals etc. – are categories of
phenomena, not singular events. I also believe that we have seen and
will continue to see various precursors to the “main events”
associated with each of these occurrences. Whereas the Lake of Fire
mentioned in Revelation is a place of eternal torment for evil men,
I'm convinced that God turneth the tide of an election cycle
whithersoever He chooseth and that He has turned the tide of the 2014
election cycle against Barack Obama for being too damn sweet, among other things. Obama
will be surrounded by a congressional Lake of Fire for his last two
years in office. He deserves all the trouble he gets. Pull up a seat and watch him burn.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Obama the Failure: We Needed a Benevolent Dictator. You'll Burn in the "Republican lake of Fire"

So the republicans took the senate and kept the house, though they aren't veto-proof. President Obama is in for a lot of headaches during his final two years in office. But he brought in on himself with weak leadership and his non-agenda which consisted largely of reversing Bush-era policies: closing Guantanamo Prison, reversing middle- and upper-class tax cuts, ending war-mongering etc.

While the repubs are indeed "the party of 'No'", the latest president and vice president to come from their numbers had an agenda -- right, wrong or indifferent. Outside of reversing Bush-era policies, Obama dreamed that he might eliminate partisan bickering and congressional dysfunction. While I won't discuss what I think are the reasons for his failure in this blog post, it is clear that he failed.

I foresee Obama spending most or all of 2015 whining about the cards he's been dealt and most or all of 2016 putting down a literal American revolution. He'll feel like a devil in a republican Lake of Fire. (There's more truth to that simile than you might realize.) For his failure to be the benevolent dictator that this country needs, I'll love watching him suffer. He should've gone hard much sooner.

As for local DC politics,I've pasted a slightly edited e-mail below. I sent this to hundreds of my contacts yesterday.....

I
hate to say it but life just got harder with the election win of
Muriel (or shall I say "More o' Hell"?) Bowser. Though I'm
with the Statehood Green Party, I would have preferred David Catania
for mayor. I've told many people that he is famously mean and that we
need the likes of Catania to force DC Government to think more and to
function better. I'm very familiar with the ignorance of the Dept. of
Human Services and would assume that the ignorance is system-wide. (I
have anecdotal evidence of ignorance in other departments that touch
Human Services in some way.) Given what I know about Fenty whose
protege "More o' Hell" Bowser is, the ignorance and
dysfunction will continue. And without Clarence Carter (who was
somewhat capable of the necessary meanness that makes people think)
as the DHS director, that mayoral, system-wide stupidity that MoH
Bowser promises to bring can't be rectified at the cabinet level.

I had high hopes that
Catania would use his mean streak to make the business community back
the f**k up and let them know that he's here for everybody, not just
the gentrifiers -- that he will ensure that economic growth doesn't
squeeze out poor residents. Those hopes have been dashed for the next
four years. My statement assumes that the stress of the job, much of
which will be brought by yours truly, doesn't kill MoH Bowser and
spur a special election. Maybe she'll get caught up in a scandal and
be indicted. Let's hope. (Never before have I actually hoped for a
scandal; but, I'm terrified by her win.) I'll make it my business to
give her MY Hell from the very start (maybe as soon as Wednesday,
November 12th,
2014). She and her council chief of staff Joy Holland received this
message, BTW.

On
the morning of November 5th as I entered a Starbucks, a homeless
vendor of the Street Sense newspaper who was familiar with my views
approached me to tell me the bad news about the MoH Bowser win. He
also said that she is meeting with developers already. Pity. This is
all the more reason to move forward with my "Worker Wednesdays"
idea mentioned in my October 26th. 2014 blog post and hyperlinked
into my e-mail signature.

I
was disappointed that neither Graylan Hagler nor Eugene Puryear won
the at-large council seats. Unlike with the mayoral race, it seems
that DC voted for the candidate that they were most familiar with in
most other races. (That was NOT the case in Ward 1.) I seems that DC
is not ready to think outside of the "two screwed-up party"
box.

David
Catania is a formerly-repubican Independent who broke ranks with the
party due to its dysfunction and lack of real moral fiber. He would
not have been beholden to a party had he won. He is gay, which I'm
indifferent to. Nonetheless, he could have been more of a champion
for the LGBT community if he had won. He might have been the city's
first White mayor, another matter that I'm indifferent to but which
rounds out the list of characteristics that he has which no other DC
mayor has ever had: not beholden to a party, non-Dumbocratic, gay and
White. Damn, he lost!!!!!

Our
advocacy just got harder. We'll need to redouble our efforts to
assert the right of the poor to live in DC and of ALL the homeless to
obtain housing here. Our only real hope lies within Kristy Greenwalt,
the director of the ICH. She is responsive to the needs and requests
(demands) of the poor. Let's collectively recommend her to Bowser.
(If Bowser hires Kristy, I might change how I feel about Bowser and
see her as that "woman apart" that she claims to be. If so,
I'll publish that statement widely.)

Of
lesser consequence but still important is that Bowser not retain
Allen Lew as city addsinistrator. he lorded over the construction of
the Nationals stadium and the Convention Center which displaced and
priced out many poor people. Now he chairs the body that is charged
with decreasing homelessness which went from 6,546 people in January
2011 when he took the position to almost 9,000 now in a city of
650,000. He also pissed me off at the June 17th, 2014 ICH meeting
when he euphemised my statement about the ICH failing. He said,
"We're not failing. We're facing bigger challenges". I
thought at that moment about how he needed to be smacked -- for
starters anyway.

In
closing, I voted in flavor of Initiative 71 to legalize (Senorita)
Marijuana in "El Distrito". After all, why lock folk up for
smoking weed if and when they aren't harming or infringing upon the
rights of others??? It passed. Yeah!!!!!

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Of late I've thought a lot about and
said a lot about the need to be mean and forceful in order to get
government and others to do what poor people need done in order to
afford to live. And while I have talked for my full eight years of
homeless advocacy about what able-bodied homeless people need in
order to find meaningful employment (with the last five years being
well-documented on-line), I recently decided that homeless employment
is ALL that I'll focus on. At the October 21st meeting of
DC's Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH) I announced that
decision and explained that there are many people speaking up for
other sub-populations of the homeless community.

I also said that we should get the
homeless working before they reach retirement age. That statement
actually drew a little laughter, speaking of which, there were
several times during that meeting that well-paid people broke out
into laughter. Some of the homeless and formerly homeless people were
actually offended by the light-hearted spirit of those whom we
sometimes refer to as “poverty pimps”. Just days earlier I was
taken aback by a photo of a Mike Brown protest in which the Blacks
looked worried or angry while the Caucasian sympathizers were all
smiles. Thanks for the sympathy ; but, mourn with those who mourn.
Don't be happy-go-lucky around the mournful. (Read Proverbs.)

This morning I went to my second
breakfast of the day at Asbury United Methodist Church at the corner
of 11th and K Streets in Northwest DC. They feed on the
fourth Sunday of each month beginning around 9:30 AM and closing down
between 10:30 and 11. The crowd was especially large today. All of
the nearly 200 seats were filled with about 50 people (myself
included) standing around the wall. I'd never seen it that full in
the several years that I've attended fourth-Sunday breakfast there. I
also noticed that, like I stated at my regular church a few blocks
away just over a month ago, there were considerably more Hispanics in
attendance. (Yo amo a los Hispanicos y puedo hablar poquito espanol.)

While there, I spoke to a couple of the
women who volunteer there each month about both concerns. One was a
good friend named Carlotta James whose youthful appearance belies her
nearly 60 years of age and whose husband Jesse James also volunteers
there. The other was a woman in her 70's named Sandra who does the
introduction and instructs the often loud group on rules and
procedures. Sandra commands a lot of respect and doesn't care if you
think of her as a “mean old lady”. I like her style. When I
mentioned the number of people in the room and the threat of a visit
from the fire marshal, Sandra (who doesn't answer to “Sandy”)
said, “That's what we need. I want them to come”. I guess she
wants to bring attention to the burgeoning homeless population in any
which way she can. I told her about the increased number of Hispanics
and the need to instruct people in Spanish to which she said that she
used to know some Spanish due to having been married to a Panamanian
and that she had, of late, considered brushing up on it for the
stated reason. My final point to her, with Carlotta having returned
to work at this point, was that I am sometimes accused of being too
mean to government officials as I press them for solutions to
homelessness. Sandra said quite matter-of-factly that “Sometimes
you need to be that way in order to get things done”. Needless to
say – though I'll say it anyway – I love Sandra. (I also love
Carlotta.) Sandra is wise enough to know that meanness is often
necessary. That's probably the understatement of the millennium.

It's not hard to make the case for why
advocates for the poor need to be mean. The late but still-renowned
homeless advocate Mitch Snyder is on record as having said, in so
many words, that advocates for the poor have to be mean and
aggressive in order to force the powers that be to notice and address
the issue of poverty; because, government would rather do the bidding
of the wealthy and the well-to-do. After all, capitalism is a
tyrannical system that permeates the world. But it's not as
monolithic as one might think. We just need to be organized and have
a lot of fight.

Former one-term mayor Adrian Fenty was
in his second year when he implemented Permanent Supportive Housing
in 2008. That program was initially funded with federal money and by
the end of 2010 had housed about 2,000 mentally- and/or
physically-disabled homeless people. It took 15 months of prodding
him before he announced the effort on April 1st, 2008 with
the first people being housed in early September of that year.

Current one-term mayor Vince Gray is in
his fourth year, having lost the Democratic primary on April 1st,
2014. In March of this year, after 38 months of prodding and the
abduction of an 8-year old girl from the family shelter, Mayor Gray
announced a plan to house 500 families in 100 days beginning on April
1st. The plan was partially successful. On October 14th,
2014 he issued a plan to replace the 288-room DC General Family
Shelter (of which 40 units are condemned) with six apartment
buildings that would contain a total of 300 temporary units for
homeless families. This plan is set to be fully implemented by
November 2015, ten months after he leaves office, making it unenforceable and tenuous.

Adrian Fenty used what I refer to as
“the facade of caring” to justify the closure of the DC Village
Family Shelter in October 2007 and the Franklin School Shelter in
September 2008 as he told the general public that either facility was
“unfit for human habitation” and led them to believe that the
housing programs which he implemented in connection with each shelter
closure would provide ample housing. Both programs have had funding
problems and the current mayor has not fully invested in either.
Fenty also failed to tell the general public that, while there were
6,044 homeless people eight months before Franklin closed, there were
6,539 homeless people in January 2010. Even with so many people being
housed, the government couldn't keep pace with the increase in
homelessness. With Franklin being closed, we now have more homeless
people than we had when it was open. We counted 7,748 this past
January, up from 6,859 last year. (That's an increase of 889 or 12.9%
in one year.)

Mayor Gray used starkly different
tactics. He painted a picture for the general public of homeless
parents whose average age range is 18 to 24 years old as being a
bunch of lazy, shiftless moochers who just want to game the system.
He got others in his administration to sing the same song. His deputy
mayor of health and human services Beatriz “BB” Otero made the
grave error of sending a memo with a message to that effect out to
many homeless advocates. I still have it saved on the laptop from
which I'm presently blogging and I periodically remind people of her
words.

All of this brings to mind two patterns
that should be of utter importance to all DC-based homeless
advocates. It took about two and a half times as long to get Gray to
make a robust effort to house homeless families as it took to get his
predecessor to make a robust effort to house disabled homeless
singles. At this rate, the next mayor can be expected to make a
robust effort to help another sub-population of the homeless
beginning in his (hopefully) or her 95th month, which puts
us at November 2022 or later. With the last two mayors having done
just one term, this means we might never get there.

The second pattern has to do with
exactly what sub-populations we're talking about and what
seemingly-humane reasons mayor can conjure up for ignoring or
under-serving them. Local homeless service providers have a bit of a
fixation on the “vulnerability index”. The “V.I.” affords
service providers with a tool for determining which homeless people
get housed first and which ones can be allowed to linger in shelter
or on the streets. DC's last two mayors have applied the underlying
principles of the V.I. In their own ways. Fenty knew that he
couldn't, with a straight face, refuse to help the mentally- or
physically-disabled homeless adults; as they are fully vulnerable.
Gray knew that, while 20-ish homeless parents without mental or
physical issues are not vulnerable, their small children are. Gray
pushed harder and longer against the tide of advocacy on their behalf
but eventually caved. Able-bodied homeless singles (those without
dependent spouses or children) are clearly the least vulnerable –
yea even totally invulnerable. The next mayor might go so far as to
utterly refuse to help able-bodied homeless singles all the way
through his or her first term and, if re-elected, well into the
second term. Have I told you that the last two mayors each did only
one term???

Rents have steadily risen in
Washington, DC over the past 10 to 15 years. I moved here in 2005.
Currently the average rent sits at $1,500 per month which requires
that one make about $30 per hour if working full time. Some years
ago, DC Government signed dozens of affordability covenants with
landlords across the city. All of them are expiring simultaneously.
Rents are jumping from $1,000 to $1,600 per month all at once. People
who are halfway through their year-long leases are being given
two-months' notice of the 60% increase. There is bound to be a wave
of evictions in April, as landlords may not evict during inclement
weather. Furthermore, the cost of DC Government maintaining the
housing of the formerly-homeless people in their housing programs
could soon increase by 60% or result in 38% of those people returning
to homelessness. (With rents jumping to eight-fifths or 160% of what they used to be, the same pot of government money will house only five-eighths or 62.5% of what it used to house.) I predict that DC will have at least 11,000 homeless
people by January 2016 and 15,000 by 2020 if nothing changes. DC Government should aim to house at least 3,000 homeless people total for each of the next five years with most of them being connected to living-wage jobs and eventually weaned off of the system.

I should add that the average life
expectancy for a homeless person was recently raised from 50 to 52
years. In any instance, I have less than seven years of life left.
(If I don't quit smoking AGAIN, my time might be considerably shorter
than that.) But whenever I meet my maker, this particular blog post
can be used to state my position on how the homeless advocates should
proceed. Never let it be said that anyone attributed an idea to me that
I didn't support during my life -- the way they do with MLK, Jr., Mitch Snyder and Jesus Christ. I don't support anyone being nice to
a capitalistic government that primarily does the bidding of the wealthy at the expense of the poor. I support meanness and revolution that
forces the wealthy and their governments to adequately and
comprehensively assist and employ the poor. I also would like to
return to work – but not without a major victory on the homeless
advocacy front. Let's see what comes first: me obtaining a living-wage job and affordable housing or death. (I'll be 52 in 2021 if I see it.)

All things considered, we need to
reverse the pattern whereby it has taken longer to procure a robust
effort by the mayor to assist the homeless. We need to see if we can
get a major announcement by April 1st, 2016 from the
mayor-elect to employ at least 2,000 homeless singles and house at least 1,000 others each year and have the
plan implemented within six months thereafter. We should have future prevention built into the plan. But that will require
relentless prodding no matter who wins.

The famously mean David
Catania seems to be better-suited for satisfying this goal than
Muriel Bowser. I love his mean streak. A sweet mayor won't be able to
combat the pervasive business interests that are gentrifying
Washington, DC at an ever-increasing rate. It is with this in mind
that I plan to type up a plan for connecting homeless singles to
employment and presenting that plan to the 14 offices of the mayor
and the DC Council beginning in early 2015 or even on Wednesday, November 5th. I'll try to do it at the
same time on “Worker Wednesday” each week. I'll announce it
on-line. Hopefully many will join me. Though none go with me, I still
will prod the mayor.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Job Discrimination Against the Homeless: Shirley Contracting and DC's First-Source Law

CORRECTION: I continue to gather more facts about the large Shirley Contracting (Clark Construction Group) project near the CCNV Shelter. The project will net Shirley $1.3 billion, not the $2.8 billion I was previously told. That doesn't change my argument that they should be made to do more to hire DC residents, such as establish an employment trailer in Washington, DC as opposed to prospective employees needing to travel all the way to Lorton, VA for an interview. Here are a couple of links about the 2.2 million square-foot project known as "Capitol Crossings": ARTICLE and WEBSITE

It's been said by social justice
advocates and activists that, “There are 20 years that don't make a
day; and then, there's that day that makes 20 years”. I think I
just had my day that makes 20 years on October 3rd, 2014.
I attended a hearing at Washington, DC's City Hall (The John A.
Wilson Building). It was about the 41% cut to TANF (Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families) that went into effect on October 1st,
2014. I didn't plan to testify, only to observe. However, as I heard
various homeless or poor mothers and one single woman from the
non-profit community testify, the gears began turning and I gave into
tempation.

A woman on the previous four-person
panel set things off when she shifted from talking about the
increased hardships that she and her child will endure as a result of
the near-half reduction in public benefits to talking about how she
doesn't believe that city officials really want to end homelessness
or poverty. She even talked about how the system that creates or
deepens people's poverty then blames those people for their poverty
and was one of at least two mothers who talked about how more poor
people will commit crimes of survival as their public benefits are
cut. They went on to mention the prison-industrial complex and how
that, as people commit crimes of survival, prisons are being built
and expanded and police are at the ready to arrest the poor and throw
them in jail where money can be made off of them.

I shared the testimony table with three
mothers. Naila (nah – EE – lah) is still relatively new to
advocacy. Other long-term advocates and I have been offering our
support to get her started. She sat to my right. Naila was the first
person on our panel to speak. She told of homeless parents being
intimidated by staff for speaking out about shelter conditions and of
how the homeless families at the Quality Inn, courtesy of DC
Government, had received notices of eviction with nowhere to go and
no one to talk to. I fleshed out what the woman on the previous panel
said by giving some very specific examples of systemic failures that
add up to poor people being gentrified out of the city or that make
their lives harder. After all, I've dealt with DC Government for
eight years and some change. I know about their major SNAFU's since
June 2006 first-hand and have heard about others that occurred prior
to my becoming a homeless advocate. A woman who shares my mother's
name and put herself through professional schooling while homeless
sat to my left. A woman who suffers from Dyslexia but has three
gifted children sat to the right of Naila who broke into tears as she
heard the mother of three speak. I held and comforted her.

Councilman Jim Graham was so impressed
with the testimonies of our panel that he strongly advised us to
organize for power. Immediately after our panel was finished, the
four of us stood, exchanged hugs (which is uncommon at a hearing) and
walked into the hall to exchange contact info and plan when we would
meet to organize. (That will happen on Monday, October 6th
at 1 PM at the MLK, Jr. Library in Room A-9.) I was impressed by the
fluidity of our collective testimonies even though we hadn't
collaborated on them. I was also impressed by the critique of the
capitalist system that took place during the hearing. It was
reminiscent of the hearing a day earlier before the same councilman
concerning the future of the CCNV Shelter. During that hearing a man
who is new to advocacy talked mainly about the hurtful effects of the
capitalist system and the fact that much of what city officials claim
to do out of concern for homeless people is just a facade. While
myself and other advocates have known these things for years, it is
unusual for a person who is testifying to exit the topic of the
hearing and give a general critique of the system; and, it is almost
unheard of to have several people's testimonies so unintentionally
and coincidentally build the case for an indictment against the same.

During my testimony I mentioned the
fact that there weren't many homeless families present at a hearing
that directly affects them; because, they don't have enough money to
ride the transit system – that the problem we were there to discuss
was self-compounding insomuch as the decreased funds decrease the
ability of the poor to attend events where they should be speaking
out about their plight. I also said that,though it's rather
pie-in-the-sky, maybe we should approach the transit authority about assisting homeless families by giving them free rides or reduced
fares, especially when attending such a meeting. Councilman Graham
would later say that he can help with transportation. I also
mentioned the fact that,with homeless families at the Quality Inn
having been told to leave with nowhere to go and no one to talk to
about their plight, we were returning to the atrocities of the winter
of 2010-11.

During that winter, homeless mothers
were turned away from an over-crowded shelter with their infants and
toddlers in tow and given tokens to ride the bus all night. (The
buses stop between 2 and 5 AM.) One particular boy who was born onFebruary 10th spent his first month of life homeless as
his mother slept with him in her storage unit, the Greyhound station
and the stairwell of an unsecured apartment building. I too mentioned
the insufficient political will to end homelessness, as I had the day
before. At both hearings I mentioned Shirley Contracting which has
begun a large 10-year building project right across the road from the
shelter and only made a token effort to hire homeless people. I'm
left to wonder if they've made any more of an effort to hire other
Washingtonians.

I left the hearing at about 1:20 PM to
go to an interview with an American University student who wanted to
know about the phenomenon whereby homeless people are made to feelinvisible. Along with one other man, I told her about how the general
public often tries not to notice a homeless person. I told her of how
homeless parents often sleep in the bushes of various parks for fear
that if they apply for shelter, the shelter is full and they are
honest about not having anywhere to sleep indoors, then theirchildren will be taken away. This causes homeless parents to want to
become “invisible”. I also told her about FEMA camps that are
being erected in various cities, ostensibly in preparation for a
disaster, and are being used as homeless shelters where a homeless
person must go and is not allowed to leave without an escort in a
van.

Then it was on to the radio station
where I was one of three people on an hour-long show that centered
around the book by my good friend, former Cleveland resident and
current American University professor Dan Kerr called “DerelictParadise”. His book addresses poverty pimping from an academic
standpoint. It shows the connection between the cheap labor afforded
by day labor halls, the race to the bottom in terms of wages and the
increase in homelessness since 1945. Dan, a Caucasian, beat me to the
punch by being the first to mention that “urban renewal” is
actually”negro removal”. (I really WAS getting ready to say that
in my next comment when he said it. Great minds think alike.) It was
here at WPFW 89.3 FM during the show with Garland Nixon from 6 to 7PM on October 3rd, 2014 that I mentioned the indictment of
Shirley Contracting for the third time in two days (all three times
having been taped and made available in the public domain.) The
indictment is as follows:

In late August or early September 2014
Shirley Contracting which is a subsidiary of Clark Construction began
work on a 10-year project near the 200 block of E Street NW in
Washington, DC. There is a shelter building which holds up to 1,350
of the city's 8,000+ homeless people which is located diagonally
across the road on the southeast corner of the same intersection. It
contains three separate shelters, a clinic, a drug program and a
kitchen that feeds 5,000 poor people per day and is collectively
known as the Federal City Shelter. The CCNV (Community for Creative
Non-Violence) is one of those shelters in the building with 950 of
the beds. There are probably 300 people in that building who are
fully capable of doing construction labor. There may be upwards of
100 who have skills in the construction trades.

Washington, DC has what are called
“First Source Laws” which mandate that employers make a
good-faith effort to ensure that at least 51% of their employees are
DC residents. After they make a good-faith effort to hire DC
residents, they are allowed to hire people from outside of DC. The
following amounts to what I suspect was a token effort to hire DC
residents and one which uses homeless people in ways that the
homeless might not be aware.

I was told by a man who, along with his
co-workers, comes from the Academy of Sciences during his lunch break
to help homeless people write resumes and apply on-line for jobs that
Shirley Contracting had indeed contacted the shelter administration
to inform them that the company was hiring. This friend had been led
to believe that the company wanted to hire a large number of people
from the shelter. The shelter administration did not make it their
business to convey this information to all residents, though I have
no complaint about the man who told me.

I went to the company's website, sent
them a message expressing my desire to discuss them hiring homeless
people, made a flier with their contact info along with what I'd been
told and posted those fliers at the shelter. On or around September
10th I called Shirley Contracting. I was put through to a
certain Carrie Carr-Maina (703-550-1127) and explained my
understanding of the matter. She seemed rather friendly, for what
that's worth to you. (She works in HR.) She said that, while she
doesn't know who from her company contacted the shelter, she thinks
that they might have simply told the shelter that Shirley is hiring
but doubts that they stated a desire to hire any homeless people. She
emphasized that anyone may apply. She explained that the application
can be done on-line or in person at the office in Lorton Virginia
which is beyond where the transit system goes and considerably
difficult to get to – especially if you are a homeless person of
limited means. (It stands to reason that the interview would be in
Lorton even if one were to apply on-line.) Ms. Carr-Maina suggested
getting a van and bringing 10 people out to apply in Lorton. She also
told me that Shirley Contracting would be participating in a job fair
at the Washington Convention Center on September 24th.

On September 23rd I called
Carrie Carr-Maina to confirm that she would be at the job fair the
next day. She said she would but then asked me if I'd seen her
e-mail. I hadn't. She then proceeded to tell me that I was publishing
bad information about Shirley Contracting that included the idea that
the companywould transport homeless people to Lorton for the
interview. I asked her when she sent it and she said the 15th.
I thought that a mentally ill homeless advocate whom I know may have
made his own version of my flier and sent it out in the name of
SHARC, the advocate group that I chaired beginning at the group's
inception in April 2011. When I went back and read the e-mail, it had
a faxed copy of my flier and a company flier along with a message
from Carrie about the large amount of human resources that were
wasted dealing with people who were calling in based on bad
information. My flier said nothing about the company having offered
to ride homeless people to the office in Lorton.

During this conversation I asked her
about the claim by a certain homeless man that Shirley Conracting was
hiring through the Local 657 labor union for construction and general
labor. She said, “No”. She also told me that many other Shirley
jobs were coming to a close and that those workers would be
transferred to the site near the shelter, leaving very few jobs for
the homeless to obtain.

I received a text from a different
number (702-358-0411) on September 23rd which said that
the job fair was at the Doubletree Hotel in Crystal City. The number
belongs to what appears to be an identity protection firm in Las
Vegas named “Level 3 VoIP”. I'm left to wonder why anybody from
Las Vegas is contacting me, with me having no connections there. I
didn't actually see the text until the morning of the 24th.
I'd hung fliers directing people to the Washington Convention days
earlier. I now had to write what I thought was the proper address on
the fliers by hand. But it was too late. Some people had already made
their way to the Convention Center.

I wrote this entire experience off as
water under the bridge and decided that I would still do all that I
could to connect homeless people to the jobs across the street from
the shelter. I printed the company flier that Carrie had sent me,
which had very scant information about the company's job offerings.
Then I went to the hearing about the shelter's future on October 2nd.
During my testimony, I mentioned the irony of it being so hard for
homeless people to get the job across the street. I highlighted that
there was an affordable housing issue on one side of the road and a
living-wage issue on the other side of the road. What I would hear
another man testify about moments later would cause the plot to
thicken.

The last man to testify was new to
advocacy. He made an indictment of the system as a whole and talked
about how DC is being given to the wealthy and the well-to-do. Then
he mentioned his experience dealing with Shirley Contracting. He'd
initially been told that the job fair was in Crystal City. He claims
that it actually took place in Pentagon City. At that moment I
realized that I wasn't the only one to be given the run-around by
Shirley Contracting and that it wasn't a matter of my own
carelessness. I made sure to mention my updated assessment at the
October 3rd hearing and during my October 3rd
broadcast.

I've brought this matter up during
several of my in-person conversations (as opposed to radio
broadcasts). My friends and associates agree with me that, if Shirley
has a project which will net them $1.3 billion and
which will last for 10 years, they should have to establish a DC
office or a mere office trailer on the job site where Washingtonians
can apply and interview. We also agree that Shirley just used the
homeless. Irrespective of their homeless status, the 1,350 people at
the Federal City Shelter are DC residents. Shirley could, in theory,
call the shelter director to say that they are hiring and then put
that down as having reached out to over 1,000 DC residents about
prospective employment with the company. Not only would it bring them
closer to reaching the bare minimum of DC residents so as to justify
them looking outside of the city for employees, in accordance with
the First Source Laws. It might also bring them closer to satisfying
some federal law that mandates that they reach out to depressed
communities and other disadvantaged groups – such as “Equal
Opportunity Laws”.

We can't let this token effort pass as
a satisfaction of either law. Let's strengthen either law so as to
require Shirley Contracting to establish a DC-based employment office
and to visit the shelter and talk directly to groups of prospective
employees at the shelter across the road. Let's take it a step
further by strictly defining the real employment opportunities that
they must offer and the reasonable accommodations that they must make
to enable homeless people to obtain employment at the site across the
road. They should also have to help them make it through until their
first check – namely with cash advances against their hours worked.
They should have to do this last thing for at least two weeks and, at
most, five or six weeks. I've picked a fight with Shirley. Who will
join that fight?????